Stories

In 1649, French engraver Claude Mellan created an image that left Paris audiences astonished. “The Sudarium of Saint Veronica,” his portrait of Christ’s face on a veil, was unlike anything seen before. It was engraved with a single spiraling line, starting at the tip of the nose.

In 1932, two young African-American sprinters—Tidye Pickett of Chicago and Louise Stokes of Malden, Massachusetts—earned places in the U.S. Olympic relay pool.

In 1928, Arthur “Art” Harold Beal bought a steep hillside lot in Cambria, California. Over the next five decades, using only a pick and shovel, he carved terraces into the slope and constructed a sprawling, eccentric home he called Nitt Witt Ridge.

On September 6, 1976, Soviet pilot Viktor Belenko flew a top-secret MiG-25 Foxbat from Vladivostok to Japan during a routine training mission. He landed on a short civilian runway in Hakodate with almost no fuel left, damaging the aircraft in the process and immediately requested asylum.

For over three decades, a man dressed head-to-toe in hand-stitched leather walked a 365-mile loop through Connecticut and New York. Known only as “The Leatherman,” he arrived in each town every 34 days, slept in rock shelters, and accepted food in silence.

At the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, one of the most popular exhibits wasn’t a ride or futuristic display—it was a glass-walled nursery. Inside, premature babies were cared for by nurses in white uniforms and doctors in coats, under a bold sign: “Living Babies in Incubators.”

In 1968, Beach Boy Dennis Wilson befriended Charles Manson, then an aspiring musician. Manson wrote “Cease to Exist” specifically for the band, hoping to mend tensions Dennis had with his brothers Brian and Carl Wilson. Dennis agreed to record it.

Shortly after the start of World War I, Hungarian newspapers reported on Perris Simon, a black man who had come from Congo to Berlin, then to Hungary as a child. Working as a doorman in Oradea, Simon spoke fluent Hungarian and dreamed of serving in the army.

In the early 1900s, Mary Ann Bevan lived an ordinary life in London as a nurse. After marrying and having four children, her life changed dramatically when she developed acromegaly, a disorder that caused abnormal growth and facial distortion. Following her husband’s death, she struggled to support her family.

On a June afternoon in 1788, James Hutton stood at Siccar Point, a remote cliff on Scotland’s coast, beside fellow Enlightenment thinkers. Before them was a rocky seam unlike anything they had seen.